Volta

UC Berkeley

The volta, a chair that generates energy while you rock.

A team of four undergraduates from UC Berkeley has created a rocking chair that generates energy while you rock.

The chair, called Volta, is equipped with a pendulum under the seat that moves as the sitter rocks back and forth. The motion of the pendulum generates energy that gets stored in batteries. That power can be used to give extra juice to electronics like phones and tablets.

Originally, the team just wanted the power generated by the chair to be a novelty. People visiting the chair could rock and compare how much energy they generated through an app. But that didn't pan out.

“Ultimately what ended up happening was people would keep saying, ‘Hey, where’s the plug to charge my phone?'” Jessica Chiu, one of the members of the team said in a release. So they added a USB port, allowing people to charge up while they relaxed and recharged.

Unfortunately, you won't be seeing these at a furniture store near you any time soon. It's heavy, at nearly 80 pounds, and the students have no current plans to bring it to market.

Other electrifying rocking chair options ran into the same issue. The Murikami Rocking chair, which generated electricity to power a light was too costly to go into full production. Another product, the iRock debuted in 2012 and was going to cost $1,700 but doesn't appear to be on the market (their website has disappeared).

While we wait for the dream of many to become a reality, we'll just have to settle for a charging station shaped like a table. It's a start.

Could Life On Earth Originated From Afar?

Source: Wikipedia

Lithopanspermia.

The word is a mouthful but it represents one of the most intriguing theories about the origin of life on Earth. Quite literally, it means life began from an extraterrestrial source and came here by hitching a ride on a rock, more specifically, a meteorite. The idea the entirety of biological life coming from afar makes for fantastic sci-fi fodder, but proving it to be possible has been even more entertaining.

The initial idea of panspermia began in ancient Greece but wasn’t fully accepted until the early 1900s, when German physicist Svante Arrhenius outlined just how this could happen. In the vastness of space, dormant seeds and spores resistant to the harsh conditions hitch a ride onto particles and travel the universe. Some eventually are drawn in by the gravity of a planet and end up on the surface. If the conditions are right, they can rise from their slumber and start growing, thriving, and evolving. The idea is hard to believe and for over a century, there was little evidence to prove the postulate. Yet by the turn of the 21st century, some of the clues began to fall into place.

First, spores were indeed able to survive in space as long as they were protected from cosmic rays. When tested in the matrix of a meteorite, the survival increased to levels capable of initiating life on another planet. Over the years, other microbes were added to list, suggesting part of the theory was indeed plausible.

Of course, survivability in space does not a terrestrial microbe make. Depending on the timing of entry, the Earth would not be the inviting environment it is today. Several factors would be extreme, including temperature, atmosphere, and nutrient supply. But amid the myriad of species on Earth, several are capable of surviving the harshest of conditions. Aptly named extremophiles, these species could indeed survive the conditions of pre-historic times and thrive.

Even with the ability to survive in space and on land, there is still a gap in the ability to turn fantasy into plausible reality. The microbe has to survive the stress of atmospheric entry. The heat could potentially kill the hardiest of spores and leave nothing more than a lifeless organic husk – or ash – on the soil. Proper shielding could offer hope but the evidence was scarce at best. One particular study in 2010 managed to send a species of algae through the entire entry process but it did not survive. In 2014, another study revealed DNA could survive the journey but this could not be extrapolated to life itself.

Last week, the theory received a boost thanks to a study by a team of Russian scientists. They found fully formed bacteria shielded by a meteorite could survive the entry process and initiate growth. The results may help to spark a new wave of tests to determine which species could actually represent the origin of life on Earth.

The group worked with a thermal-resistant extremophile known as Thermoanaerobacter siderophilus. It was discovered in 1999 in vents proximal to the Karymsky volcano in Russia. The bacterium is capable of not only surviving high temperatures, but also can grow in the presence of iron and form endospores in stressful environment. This made it the perfect candidate for testing. The species was grown up, dried and placed into an artificial meteorite. The test object was 2¾ inches in diameter and comprised of a compound considered to be excellent for mimicking meteorites, basalt.

The meteorite/bacteria combination was placed onto the outside surface of the FOTON-M4 satellite and then sent up into orbit. After 45 days, the satellite returned to Earth exposing the meteorite to the extreme conditions of entry including a stretch where the temperature was over 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the ordeal was complete, a parachute brought the satellite to Earth allowing for testing to be completed.

Back at the lab, the bacteria were put into media for any signs of growth. To be sure no contamination was possible, strict aseptic technique was performed and sterility controls were used. With no extraneous growth detected, the researchers knew any signs of life would be solely from the samples.

It took five days but eventually, there was growth. Not all of the samples survived (4 of 24) but those that did grow as if nothing had happened. For the researchers, this was an incredible observation. Although it didn’t help to answer the greater questions on the origins of life – T. siderophilus is most likely not our original life form – the results did reveal lithopanspermia is entirely possible.

This study was the first documented case of microbial survival but the researchers suggested this is only the beginning. Future tests can now be performed on other microbial species using T. siderophilus as a positive control. This will allow for more scientifically valid experiments as well as open the door to testing a wider variety of species. Though the journey may be slow, the path towards finding the truth behind lithopanspermia is now clear and may offer hope to finally figuring out how life began on this pale blue dot we call home.

Earth

NASA/NOAA GOES Project

Looks like public health isn't good enough anymore. A new report from a commission headed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the medical journal The Lancet says that we need a new way to look at human health--one that takes the environment into account.

The new field, called planetary health, looks at the intersection between the natural world and humans. Often, that intersection is a head on collision that ends badly for both parties. The commission's report goes beyond a similar report issued by The Lancetlast month which looked at the effect climate change had on public health. Instead of just looking at climate, this new, interdisciplinary area of study focuses on all the ways that humans interact with their environment.

In the past century alone, poverty has declined and life expectancies have gone up, biodiversity has plummeted, fresh water supplies have been depleted, forests have been cut down, and the climate is changing fast.

While it might seem like the good news of the former two examples are unrelated to the apocalyptic nature of the latter three, everything is connected. The better health, longer life and prosperity of our growing human population was only made possible by using all the resources we could get our hands on.

But, like we all learned in elementary school, actions have consequences.

The commission found that the current gains we've made in health and society could easily disappear along with our resources. For a dramatized version idea of this concept, go watch Mad Max: Fury Road.

In two different studies, public health researcher Sam Myers found that changes in the environment could lead to increased mortality rates. In one, he found that declines in pollinators like bees could lead to fewer crops and, as a result, over 1.4 million additional deaths per year. In another, he found that high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could lead to less zinc absorbed in plants. That might not seem like a big thing, but zinc is a nutrient needed by our immune system. If crops have less zinc overall, then Myers estimates that between 132 and 180 million people could have a zinc deficiency by 2050, in addition to the people already suffering from malnutrition.

Then there's a host of other health risks. Water shortages and plant diseases can affect the food supply. Humans encroaching into wildlife habitats not only harms the wildlife, but can also bring us into contact with unknown and deadly diseases like Ebola.

At a discussion of the commission's results, Steven Osofsky, the Executive Director of Wildlife Health and Health Policy for the Wildlife Conservation society, compared the situation to the entire planet being on an airplane with rivets slowly popping off one by one. Rising temperatures. Pop. Disappearing pollinators. Pop. Drinking through groundwater supplies. Pop.

"How many rivets before the plane crashes?" Osofsky asked.

That all sounds pretty terrible. Luckily, there is hope. The driving idea behind planetary health is not to study the end of the world, but to do something about it. Among the commission's recommendations, they suggest focusing on policies that are good for both the environment and human health, like reducing air pollution, reducing infectious disease risk, and improving diets. They also suggest getting rid of harmful subsidies that encourage reliance on unsustainable practices like using fossil fuels, and encouraging interdisciplinary research.

"Let's go for a realistic utopia, that we can reasonably create together" Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet says.

The robot controlled by simulated bacteria

Virginia Tech

The colonies of bacteria living on your body do more than help you digest food. According to models created by researchers from Virginia Tech, bacteria could control an inanimate host like a robot.

"Basically we were trying to find out from the mathematical model if we could build a living microbiome on a nonliving host and control the host through the microbiome," said Warren Ruder, a professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech and one of the study authors in a press release. "We found that robots may indeed be able to have a working brain."

The study, published yesterday in Scientific Reports, is built on several mathematical models. In the first, a computer simulates a community of E. coli bacteria with different sets of genes, engineered to glow either red or green depending on what they ate. The model predicted how the bacteria would communicate with one another, and that information was transmitted to a (theoretical) robot, equipped with sensors and a miniature microscope. The pigment and and the intensity of the color controlled the robot’s movements.

The researchers used these various models to test how a robot would move. They had anticipated some of the movements, like those that were straightforward and directed toward a food source. But when they gave the robot the ability to communicate back to the bacteria, they saw movements that surprised them, like when the robot approached food, paused, the sped quickly on its final approach—a classic predatory behavior, the authors note.

This work shows that bacteria can, in fact, control robots, which could lead to robots that could clean up oil spills. But it also offers a better understanding of humans’ relationship to their microbiome, which could help researchers develop new medicines that use bacteria to treat physical or mental conditions.

Illustration of Buckyball in Space

NASA/JPL

There are buckyballs floating around in space! Not to be confused with toy magnets, buckyballs are soccer-ball-shaped molecules made up of 60 carbon atoms, affectionately named for their resemblance to the geodesic dome designs of Buckminster Fuller.

In a paper published this week in Nature, researchers announced that they had identified strange signals in space as a sign that buckyballs were floating in the middle of nowhere.

This isn't the first time that buckyballs have been spotted in otherworldly locations. Researchers using the Spitzer telescope first spotted buckyballs in a nebula five years ago, and a vast quantity of them circling two stars in 2012.

But unlike those, these buckyballs were identified as the culprit in a nearly century-long whodunnit. As Nature News reports, astronomer Mary Lea Heger first noticed odd variations in light coming through interstellar space in 1919. Astronomers assumed these variations, called diffuse interstellar bands were caused by dust, or other tiny space detritus. But at least two of these bands, first spotted in 1994, are a match for buckyballs examined in space-like conditions.

To make the positive identification, scientists cooled buckyballs in a lab to nearly absolute zero, placed them in a vacuum, and shone light through them. The light passing through the buckyballs in the lab was a match for the light seen through telescopes.

Nao Robot

Stephen Chin/ Flickr CC by 2.0

We’re a long way off from having robots with an artificial intelligence close to what is seen in movies such as Her or Ex Machina. But for the first time, three humanoid robots showed a glimmer of self-consciousness by solving a classic philosophical problem.

The robotic trio was composed of three old Nao models, but the experiment that was conducted on them was extremely novel — and so were the results.

The robots were programed to think that two of them had been given a “dumbing pill” that would make them unable to speak (actually just a button that silenced them). However, they didn't know exactly which two of them had been silenced. When the robots were asked to answer which two had been given the pill, all of them tried to respond: “I don’t know.” Since only one was actually able to utter the words, it heard its own voice and recognized it wasn't among the two who had been silenced. That robot then responded: “Sorry, I know now. I was able to prove that I was not given a dumbing pill.”

Not only are the Nao bots polite, the test requires them to accomplish very basic forms of self-awareness. Each robot must be able to understand the question, as well as to be able to recognize its own voice. They must also be able to infer that if they were able to speak, they weren't one of the robots who had received the “dumbing pill.”

The test is a variation of an induction puzzle called “The King's Wise Men.” In the puzzle’s scenario, a king decides who will be his new advisor by calling three of the wisest men to his court to participate in a contest, which he promises will be fair. He tells all three wise men that he's putting either a white or blue hat on their heads, but the color of each hat can only be seen by the men not wearing it. The King goes on to tell the men that at least one of them is wearing a blue hat. The first wise man to figure out the color of his own hat becomes the new king’s advisor. In fact, the solution is that they're all wearing blue hats.

Selmer Bringsjord, a professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, ran the test on the robots. He works on building artificial intelligence systems on the basis of computational logic. His work will be presented at RO-MAN, a robotics and artificial consciousness conference in Japan. The current theme of the conference, which runs from August 31 to Sept. 4, is “Interaction With Socially Embedded Robots.”

According to Bringsjord’s faculty bio, he claims that "'armchair' reasoning time has enabled him to deduce that the human mind will forever be superior to such machines.”

Watch a video of the test below.

A lit cigarette

Wikimedia Commons

If you've ever wondered what bacteria are currently taking up residence inside your mouth, you are in luck. uBiome, a biotech startup based in San Francisco, is eager to find out, and is willing to let you in on the results--for free. The company is collecting bacteria samples from the mouths of smokers, previous smokers, and nonsmokers. They hope to understand more about how bacteria may influence diseases common to smokers. In return, participants will receive a free breakdown of the bacteria currently inhabiting their mouths.

uBiome, which started in 2012, plans to use big data to understand how the microbiome affects diseases while at the same time allowing consumers to learn about their bodies and personal health. This month they also launched a study to test the effectiveness of probiotics, asking participants to test their gut microbiome before and after consuming probiotic supplements.

Over the past several decades, scientists have learned a great deal about the impact smoking can have on a number of oral health problems, such as gum disease, tooth decay, and oral cancer. However, until recently, scientists knew very little about smoking’s impact on a person’s microbiome--the collection of bacteria that live on or in the human body.

While bacteria live everywhere on the human body, the mouth alone may house up to 1,000 different species. By comparing smokers, former smokers, and nonsmokers, uBiome hopes to shed some light on how and which bacteria may contribute to the development of oral diseases.

"Despite the known health risks, about 42 million Americans smoke. One way or another we’re all affected by smoking," said Jessica Richman, the co-founder and CEO of uBiome in a press release. uBiome additionally plans to analyze the differences between the oral microbiomes of those who started smoking as teenagers and those who started later in life. By studying these differences, they hope to further understand how smoking affects human health.

Fruzsina Eördögh

Researchers at the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences have successfully created artificial mouse sperm that are easily replicable and, when implanted in an egg, more reliably grow into healthy mice. The resulting 125 pups, 39 of which weren't born healthy, could make up a small army of mice to be used for research into genetic diseases.

In 2012, the same researchers created artificial sperm for the first time, which they were able to implant in a natural egg. It only sort-of worked—just two percent of the embryos developed into healthy mice.

In this most recent study, published last week in Cell Stem Cell the researchers wanted to improve their method. By tweaking two of the genes in the sperm, they were able to raise the success rate to 20 percent. The researchers also found that, using the gene snipping and splicing enzyme CRISPR/Cas9, they could manipulate several other genes, which could help researchers better understand how those genes affect a mouse’s development.

Researchers make artificial sperm by knocking out the nucleus of an egg and replacing it with one set of DNA from the father of the offspring-to-be. The resulting gamete is a haploid, meaning that it only has one set of DNA, but it can still implant itself in a natural egg and work as natural sperm does.

Artificial sperm don’t have tails, so they would still lose to natural sperm in a swimming contest. But for research purposes they do have some advantages. Since they can control half of the genes in the embryo, the researchers can better understand the functions of particular genes, so that they can develop new treatments for genetic conditions or cancer.

But some elements of the research are cause for concern, or at least show the technique’s limitations. The researchers aren’t sure of the function of the genes they knocked out using CRISPR/Cas9 or how it will affect the mice’s development. And though the researchers hope to use their artificial sperm and genetic editing techniques to better understand human disease, using mass-produced artificial sperm in humans would create an "ethical crisis.”

Overall, however, the researchers are confident that their work will help researchers working to understand the genetic drivers of disease. Jinsong Li, one of the study authors, told the South China Morning Post: "Our man-made sperm cells can be used to generate an army of half-cloned mice with ease and efficiency. These half-cloned mice will fight on the front line in battles against cancer and other genetic health issues."

Golf

Wojciech Kulicki/FlickrCC by 2.0

Golf has been around for hundreds of years. And while interest in golf is declining, the future for golf courses has never been brighter.

It's just that no one will be golfing on them.

Golf courses tend to be large plots of land, devoid of trees and shade. That makes them perfect places for solar panels. At least, that's the thinking behind Japanese electronics company Kyocera's latest plan. The company intends to turn an abandoned golf course into a huge solar farm, generating enough energy to power 8,100 Japanese homes.

It's certainly a good way to 'green' golf courses, and not just because it will become a source of renewable energy. A solar farm will use only a minuscule fraction of the amount of water used by an active golf course. Which could make it a very good choice for drought-stressed California golf courses.

Golf courses, with their huge expanses of grass, use up significant amounts of water. Golfers hitting the links in California are finding less green grass on the fairways, if they're open at all.

Nitrogen canisters

Rebecca Harrington

East 27th Street and Madison Avenue on July 14

I had sporadically seen mysterious nitrogen canisters on New York City sidewalks, and wondered what they were doing there. Each tank has a hose snaking its way into a manhole, where it presumably dispenses nitrogen under the street. Luckily, Popular Science let me find out as part of my job (booyah). It turns out they're there to keep copper cables dry so phone and internet services can run smoothly.

Verizon spokesman John Bonomo said the tanks supplement the company’s existing pressurized system to keep its cables dry when repairs are going on or there’s too much steam present. The cables have a protective sheath around them, but sometimes it's not enough to keep them dry. "But as durable as that is," Bonomo said, "that gets penetrated by the elements, as well, over time."

As the liquid nitrogen leaves the canister, it turns into a gas. When nitrogen undergoes this phase change, it expands 175 times. This keeps the cables at a high enough pressure to keep moisture out.

Two tanks at Madison Avenue and East 27th Street in Manhattan have been there for about a year because of steam buildup, said Verizon's local manager for Manhattan pressure Alex Diachok. The space under Madison and Lexington avenues, especially, is much smaller than other areas under the city, he said, and temperatures can reach 220°F. The tanks are mostly used in Manhattan because of the congestion, temperature and water table of the island, Bonomo said. Dan Mattiace from McKinney Welding Supply, who supplies Verizon's nitrogen, said liquid nitrogen is the best option for this application because liquid oxygen is combustible, and liquid helium and carbon dioxide are too expensive.

Warning signs

Rebecca Harrington

Under pressure

Rebecca Harrington

While the warning signs on the tanks may seem alarming, Bonomo said they have never exploded or significantly leaked in the city, but they have tipped over on occasion when a car has backed into them, for instance. The cans are so sturdy that toppling hasn't caused any leaks, Diachok said, and Verizon technicians are able to simply stand them back up. Sometimes the tanks need to release pressure by shooting a plume of nitrogen above the tank. It looks like snow because the nitrogen cools the water molecules in the air so quickly that they freeze. Verizon area manager for insulation and maintenance Patrick Johnson said this is just a normal function of the canisters and is nothing to worry about. Verizon technicians check each canister every night to make sure they’re functioning properly, Diachok said.

“We’ve done a lot of work to get these off the street,” Johnson said. “It’s a big expense. This is not our business.” Just refilling the tank costs about $100, Diachok said, which they have to do every day to every three days. Right now in the city, Verizon has 54 tanks at 28 sites, and that number goes up in the winter when there’s more steam underground since it’s used to heat the buildings.

Verizon’s copper cables mostly send phone calls, but also transmit fire and security alarms and still carry some internet via DSL, too. As Verizon transitions its network from copper cables to fiber, the nitrogen canisters will go away, since fiber-optic cables are impervious to water.

Rebecca Harrington

Soon celiacs could enjoy a delicious meal of pizza and beer.

Marco Tripisciano via Wikimedia Commons

All Hoon Sunwoo wanted was to drink a beer with his friend. But his friend has celiac disease, an autoimmune condition in which a person generates an immune response to gluten, a mix of proteins found in anything from pasta to soy sauce. The resulting inflammation limits that person’s ability to digest and absorb key nutrients from food. Luckily for his friend, Hoon Sunwoo is a professor of pharmacology at the University of Alberta, and he’s spent the last 10 years developing a pill that his friend could take before drinking a beer so that he wouldn’t feel sick afterward.

When a person with celiac disease takes the pill, antibodies found in egg yolk coat the gluten as it passes through the digestive tract. That way, it doesn’t stimulate the sensitive gluten receptors in the small intestine. The pill has to be taken five minutes before eating, and works for a maximum of two hours, during which the person could chug beer or chow down on pizza worry-free.

The pill isn’t a treatment or a cure for celiac, Sunwoo tells the CBC—it’s just a way to improve a patient’s quality of life.

Through a partnership between the University of Alberta and biotech company IGY Incorporated, the pill completed its first phase of clinical trials two months ago in Canada showing that it’s safe. Its developers plan to start the next phase showing the pill’s efficacy next year. If all goes well, the pill could be available commercially in just two to three years, according to some reports.

Home

NASA

When I was growing up, there were nine planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. By 1989, all of those planets had been explored … except Pluto. Though it's no longer classified as a planet by some folks, Pluto is one of the largest worlds in the outer solar system, and it remained a mystery until this week.

But the New Horizons flyby of Pluto marks the end of planetary exploration.

“There’s not another mission like this in our time,” said New Horizons principle investigator Alan Stern in the days before the flyby. “We’re the only 21st century team that’s planning to explore a frontier planet, and no one’s planning to do it again.”

In the past 50 years, American spacecraft have visited every major component of our solar system. Will the kids of tomorrow know what it’s like to see a planet unveiled for the first time? During the Pluto flyby, John Grunsfeld, from NASA’s science mission directorate, suggested that, 500 years from now, this time period will be considered the golden age of space exploration, similar to the European age of exploration. “There’s very little terra incognita left in our solar system today,” he said.

Earthly exploration didn’t stop when the Europeans shouted “Land ho!”, and neither will our exploration of the solar system. It's just about to kick into a new gear.

Pushing The Frontier Farther

Enceladus And Its Plumes Of Water

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

With its main mission ended, the New Horizons spacecraft may win additional funding to explore a new object in the Kuiper Belt—the ring of rocky debris that’s home to Pluto and many other frigid dwarf planets.

Other worlds of interest include: Jupiter’s moon Europa, home to a huge subsurface ocean; Enceladus, which has geysers spewing out water, methane, and nitrogen; and Eris, a dwarf planet that’s larger than Pluto.

“There is this sort of underground sentiment that we do need to get back to the outer solar system, but it's hard,” said Heidi Hammel, executive vice president of the nonprofit Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. “We’re just working now on identifying the technologies that will enable those missions to be not so long, not so expensive. New Horizons has set the standard for that. So we hope that with New Horizons under our belt, we can try to crack open the outer solar system so that we can get back there again.”

“With New Horizons under our belt, we can try to crack open the outer solar system.”

Jim Green, NASA’s planetary science division director, says the Space Launch System--a heavy-lift rocket that NASA is developing with the aim of bringing humans to Mars--will make exploring the new frontier a lot easier. Because it's designed to carry huge masses, launching a smaller unmanned craft to the outer solar system will be easy, Green said.

For example, for a mission to Europa, the traditional way of using other planets’ gravity to speed up a spacecraft would get it there in about eight years. By comparison, Green said the SLS would be able to send it straight there in two years. “That just blows open the outer solar system. So you can actually accomplish several of those in a decade.”

Filling In The Details

Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of the most promising spots to look for life beyond Earth. It’s got water, an energy source, and the building blocks of life. We know these things in part because we’ve already seen it, during Galileo’s 11 flybys.

“It’s been visited once, which is sort of like when a ship goes off, comes back and says ‘Wow, we saw new land but we don’t know anything about it,’” John Grunsfeld told Popular Science. “Now were going to send a dedicated mission out to actually map it and tell us whether there are organics.”

It’s time to send some robotic Lewises and Clarks to dig deeper into the worlds we’ve only just glimpsed.

Europa

NASA

NASA plans to explore Europa in the 2020s, to determine whether the conditions are right for simple life forms to take root there.

Just like the exploration of America didn’t stop at the coast, it’s time to send some robotic Lewises and Clarks to dig deeper into the worlds we’ve only just glimpsed.

“We’re still filling out the details of the inner solar system,” says Grunsfeld. “We’ve only had one look at Venus, for instance. There’s a lot of scientists who want to go back to Venus, because there’s some indication that it might still be active. Even the Mars map is still being filled out.”

Finding New Planets To Explore

The Milky Way is teeming with planets that revolve around other suns, making our own 8 or 9 planets seem paltry by comparison. Grunsfeld says the real frontier will be beyond our solar system, and the key to exploring that frontier will be a next-generation space telescope. A telescope like the High-Definition Space Telescope or larger will help us track down those exoplanets and find out what they’re like.

“It will have the ability in principle to start mapping planets around other stars,” says Grunsfeld. “Not detailed maps, but it will tell us about light and dark regions, oceans and continents, polar caps and clouds, if they’re bright enough and close enough.

“One of the reasons I’m so interested in finding and characterizing exoplanets is to find one that we want to go to.”

Colonizing

European exploration didn’t stop at just making maps, and the hope is that our solar system exploration won’t end there either. (Hopefully we won’t subjugate any sentient lifeforms in the process.)

“We are going to leave Earth,” says Grunsfeld. “We're working really hard to get planetary scientists to the surface of Mars, and on.”

NASA’s first manned missions to Mars are scheduled for the 2030s, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has stated often that he plans to retire on Mars. We’re still a long way from making that happen, but spreading humanity to other worlds may be the key to our survival as a species.

“We explore to survive,” said Jim Green during the Pluto flyby. “I truly believe that we have to continue exploring our solar system. We have to know what's out there. It’s important for our species to think about its destiny, and is our destiny only on Earth? I think it’s out in the solar system.”

Close-up of Pluto's heart

NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

The latest imagery of Pluto captured during NASA's New Horizons flyby reveals an extreme close-up of the heart-shaped landmass in Pluto's southern hemisphere. The alien landscape appears to be a vast, craterless plain interrupted by a few small hills. The absence of craters suggests this terrain is quite young by the standards of the solar system, just 100 million years or so.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft completed its flyby of Pluto three days ago, but the most incredible views of the dwarf planet are just coming to light now.

On Friday afternoon, NASA released new close-up imagery of Pluto's surface captured from just 48,000 miles above the surface — not even as close as New Horizons got at its closest approach, about 7,800 miles. The latest imagery is nonetheless breathtaking to behold, showing us what the interior of the "heart" landmass in Pluto's southern hemisphere really looks like: a vast plain stretching for 12 miles, with large smooth areas interrupted by hills and troughs. Notably missing are impact craters from meteors, indicating that the surfaces is likely very young for the solar system, just 100 million years, or so.

The Sputnik Plains Are Located In The Heart Of Pluto

NASA

Nicknamed "Sputnik Planum", the plains neighbor the 11,000-foot tall ice mountains New Horizons discovered earlier this week. Fly over the contrast-y landscape with this NASA animation:

Let's watch that again, in gif form. Here's Norgay Montes, the icy mountains:

And Sputnik Planum:

Photo Credit: Senior Airman Joshua Strang via Wikimedia Commons

Project: Aurorasaurus

Aurorae are one of nature's greatest light shows: beautiful dancing patterns of colored light dancing across the sky. They occur when charged particles from cosmic rays, solar wind and magnetospheric plasma interact with Earth's upper atmosphere.

Apart from being beautiful and awe-inspiring, tracking aurorae can help scientists learn more about what's happening in space, and to better understand the phenomenon itself. That's why a 'ground truth' project wants you to tell them when you spot an aurora. The project, called Aurorasaurus, gathers data about aurora sightings in real time and sends out notifications when Northern Lights are likely visible.

But wait, if they're called the Northern Lights, just how many of you will be able to see them? Perhaps more than you think. Many previous aurorae have been visible as far south as Utah and Indiana.

"The aurora represents a great visual tool for scientists to use in the study of the space environment," says Allyson James, a scientist in the space physics group at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Surveying auroral emissions is a bit like looking at a giant television screen; the picture can help scientists figure out what is happening with energetic particles, and electromagnetic fields, from just above the Earth to far out in surrounding space."

To participate, you simply register at http://aurorasaurus.org/login/ using your Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ profile. Then you let them know your location and email address (to receive notifications about pending aurorae). Then the next time you see one, you can Tweet about it; the project will automatically find your Tweet and note your location. You can also try photographing it; there's a handy how-to guide posted at http://aurorasaurus.org/learn#how-to-photograph. Have fun and enjoy the view!

Chandra Clarke is a Webby Honoree-winning blogger, a successful entrepreneur, and an author. Her book Be the Change: Saving the World with Citizen Science is available at Amazon. You can connect with her on Twitter @chandraclarke.

Ancient Cavity

Benazzi et al./Scientific Reports 2015

This tooth is the earliest known example of dentistry.

Going to the dentist isn't generally fun. You lie there, with your mouth open while someone picks and scrapes at your teeth. There's a reason they bribe kids with toys and those adorable tiny toothpaste tubes. But as you prepare for your next dental checkup, remember that it really could be so much worse.

Researchers recently discovered the earliest evidence of people trying to treat cavities. A 14,000 year old tooth with a cavity showed signs of being scraped by a small flint tool.

The objective, apparently, was to remove the rotting parts of the infected tooth. That isn't all that different from how dentists treat cavities today. When you go to your dentist with a cavity, they also remove the infected part of the tooth. The difference is, nowadays, they can numb the part of your mouth with the cavity, and also fill it in after the infected part is removed. Also, your dentist isn't using rocks to fix your teeth.

The unfortunate soul who endured the prehistoric dentistry definitely did not have access to local anesthetic, and was about 7,500 years too early for even the most basic dental filling, beeswax.

This prosthetic doesn’t go out on a limb, but into a limb.

The FDA has just approved leg prosthetics that anchor directly to the bone, which could change the lives of amputees who cannot use typical ball-and-socket prosthetics.

Most prosthetics require a cup-shaped socket to be fastened to an amputee's residual limb, but some amputees don’t have enough limb left to use this method of attaching a prosthetic. The Osseoanchored Prosthesis for the Rehabilitation of Amputees (OPRA) device solves this issue by using fixtures that are implanted directly into the amputee’s bone, which allows them to attach a prosthetic to it, like a bionic K’Nex.

The device is surgically installed with two procedures. In the first procedure, a cylinder-shaped fixture is implanted directly into the remaining bone. The implant is made out of titanium so that the bone does not reject it. After about six months when the tissue has grown around the fixture, a rod is implanted that extends through the skin, which can be inserted and clasped to a prosthetic. The patient is then required to go through six months of training before being fitted with a customized prosthetic.

A 2014 study published in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation found that amputees using the device reported increased mobility, comfort, and function. Amputees using this device also don't have to worry about issues such as heat and chafing that prosthetic sockets give.

Although the device can be applied to arm, leg, and hand prosthetics, the FDA has limited its approval to adults who have had leg amputations above the knee.

“The OPRA device may help those with above-the-knee amputations who have had problems with rehabilitation and have not been able to benefit from available socket prostheses,” said William Maisel, acting director of the Office of Device Evaluation in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health in a press release.

A major concern with bone-anchored prosthetics is the risk of infection. Stanmore Implants, a prosthetics company in the UK, got around this by modeling their prosthetics after the way deer antlers are attached. The device, called the Intraosseous Transcutaneous Amputation Prosthesis (ITAP), has pores to help soft tissue seal off the connection between the skin and bone, which reduces the chance of bacteria getting it. The device has been shown to be effective in both animals and humans, but has yet to be approved in the U.S.

Even though the U.S. is taking baby steps to approve more bone-anchored prosthetics, it is an exciting prospect for the future of bionic limbs.

Tesla's Model S hits the road in San Francisco

Eric Adams

Electric car maker Tesla conducted a mysterious conference call/press announcement today. By “mysterious,” of course, we simply mean they didn’t announce what they were talking about beforehand, and the Internet immediately labeled it mysterious, even though they never announce what they’re going to talk about. That company gets buzz handed to it on a silver platter …

Anyway, the call just wrapped, and the company announced several items related to its Model S sedan. First, the addition of a 90-kWh battery pack for the Model S, adding $3,000 to the car and 15 miles in range, bringing it close to 300 miles at a 65 mph highway speed. Three hundred miles is something of a magic number when it comes to swatting away consumers' so-called "range anxiety." We're glad to see they're getting closer to that.

Next, visionary CEO Elon Musk announced that the Model S P85D—their high-performance, dual-motor, all-wheel-drive version—would get an additional button that would bump up its “Insane Mode” mode to “Ludicrous Mode,” trimming the 0-60 mph time from 3.2 to 2.8 seconds and generating 1.1 Gs of acceleration, which Musk said is “faster than falling.” (Going to have to fact-check that bit.) The feature adds $10,000 to the price of the P85D, as opposed to $5,000 for the simpler Insane Mode.

Tesla's current Model S in San Francisco

Eric Adams

Now, critical additional intel: it should be noted that I happen to have driven the P85D last week while in San Francisco, and in my Instagram post (@ericadams321) at the time, I noted that the name should be changed to “Ludicrous Speed” in honor of the movie Spaceballs, for no particular reason. So I’m going to go ahead and take credit for that. You’re welcome.

Finally, the company updated the status of the Model X SUV and the Model 3 entry-level sedan. The former is on track for rollout in two months, the latter in two years. Ludicrous Mode will be available on the Model X, as well, giving the SUV a 0-60 time of 3 seconds, which is, well, also insanely ludicrous. With its low-slung battery, it could very well be the best-handling and fastest SUV in world history.

The other item on Tesla-watchers’ radars is autonomous mode, called Autopilot and a part of the forthcoming Version 7.0 of the car’s software update. Musk mentioned that he’s been testing it daily in Los Angeles and he’s very happy with it, though it’s still occasionally stymied by things like faded road lines. The functionality works from on-ramp to off-ramp — so highway only. It will follow the car ahead of you, change lanes on command, pass lamer cars, and keep its distance from other vehicles. It’s completely hands-off, but will require fairly persistent driver attention. Musk expects a beta release in a few weeks. The P85D I drove last week had easily the best adaptive cruise control I’ve experienced—it’s smooth and consistent, and its emergency braking excellent, as I found out accidentally on the freeway.

It’s pretty astounding, of course, that Tesla can introduce such radical features as autonomous drive simply via a Wi-Fi distributed software update. That’s the future, friends.

Let's all take a moment to think about velociraptors.

In the quintessential dinosaur movies of the Jurassic Park/World franchise, velociraptors were killing machines that looked something like this:

Unfortunately, not all paleontologists were happy with the aesthetic choice. See, for some time now, scientists have known that avian dinosaurs (those related to birds) likely had feathers and probably looked a little more like this:

Many dinosaurs, including velociraptors, definitely had feathers. And now, scientists have found a fossil that shows us what a fuzzy velociraptor would have looked like.

In a paper published this week in Scientific Reports, researchers announced the discovery of a dinosaur closely related to the velociraptor that definitely had feathers.

“This new dinosaur is one of the closest cousins of Velociraptor, but it looks just like a bird. It’s a dinosaur with huge wings made up of quill pen feathers, just like an eagle or a vulture. The movies have it wrong – this is what Velociraptor would have looked like too,” says Steve Brusette, co-author of the study.

The new dinosaur, named Zhenyuanlong suni would have been about 5 feet long, and lived 125 million years ago. It is the largest dinosaur with feathered, bird-like wings discovered so far. Given the size of the wings and the size of the dinosaur, it likely didn't fly. The researchers speculate that the feathers on the wings and tail could have been used for display instead.

Apparently, robots like road trips. A Canadian robot, hitchBOT started out on a cross-country road trip today, planning to travel from Boston, all the way out to San Francisco, sightseeing along the way.

Last year hitchBOT traversed Canada going from Halifax to British Columbia. It has also visited Europe, touring Germany and the Netherlands.

HitchBOT is equipped with a GPS, a camera, and software that allows it to have actual conversations with the people giving it rides. It can't move though, so it relies on people to pick it up and take it to where it needs to go--in this case, the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

HitchBOT already has its first ride out of Boston:

You can follow hitchBot's progress on its website and social media channels.